


Breaking Down the Complex Machine

by lionessvalenti



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e04 Cyberwoman, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toshiko and Jack prepare to dismantle the remains of the cyber-conversion unit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Down the Complex Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by Lefaym.

It was four days later and the Hub still smelled of burnt metal and stale blood. It didn't matter how loudly Owen complained, or how many scented candles Gwen lit or sticks of incense Toshiko put on to burn, the metal and the blood still lingered in the air. Maybe it was all in their heads, knowing what happened, but their combined subconscious thoughts couldn't be that in tuned with each other, could they? So they complained more, lit more candles, and burned more incense until they could forget.

Jack never said a word. Not that his silence was unusual, but after three years working for him, Toshiko knew Jack's moods well enough to know when something was wrong (of course something was wrong, Ianto brought a Cyberman into Torchwood and amidst the chaos, Jack held a gun to Ianto's head and threatened to kill him, while Ianto didn't bat an eye; what about that _wasn't_ wrong?). When Jack was in a foul mood he snapped at little comments and barked orders, but this Jack said nothing. He didn't seem angry anymore. He seemed sad.

Maybe that was why he didn't kill Ianto.

Of course, there was very little evidence to say that he hadn't. After they shot the pizza girl with Lisa's brain (Annie, her name was Annie, though Toshiko didn't know that until she looked her up later), Jack ordered them to leave. When Gwen reached out to Ianto, Jack stopped her and told her to go home. The next morning, the bodies, along with Ianto, were gone. All that remained was a mess in the Hub and that smell.

Toshiko checked Ianto's file the next morning, but Jack hadn't closed it out. It was the only thing giving her hope that Ianto was still alive (she was angry at the time, but she wasn't prone to grudge holding or wishing death on people, and now she felt an insurmountable pity toward him). She decided to wait a week, and if Jack hadn't mentioned Ianto's whereabouts by then, she was simply going to ask.

It was mid-morning on the fourth day after that Jack came up behind her and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. She craned her neck to look at his grim face (his split lip was still healing, but after getting two doses of electricity, he was fortunate that the results of Ianto's punch was the only lasting effect he had).

"Jack?" To herself, she sounded wary, and she hoped no one else noticed. Gwen was only across the way at her desk, but thankfully, Owen was somewhere else. She wasn't sure where as she hadn't seen him leave.

"Come with me," Jack said. "You and I have a special project."

Gwen was listening in. She wasn't even pretending to be doing work on her computer. It's not like they couldn't see her, but then again, it wasn't a private conversation. It was a work conversation. Gwen wanted to be included; she wanted Jack to ask her come along too, even when she didn't know what the work was or if she could help. It didn't matter. She was eager, and Toshiko remembered being that eager (to work with Suzie, especially), but she had always been too shy to openly eavesdrop.

"What kind of project?" Toshiko asked, willing her voice to be steady. It worked. She sounded calmed and professional, if not a little wooden.

"A special one," Jack replied, quirking a sort of half smile. It looked unnatural on him, when she was so used to his film star grin or nothing.

"All--all right. Let me just... save this..." Toshiko turned back to her computer and ran her fingers over a series of keys. She didn't want Jack to see she wasn't doing any of her assigned work, but working on an experimental security measure for the Hub. It was just a theory right now, and she had no idea if it was actually possible in practice, but it seemed like a good time to work on it.

When her worked was saved, and Jack had given instructions to Gwen (let him know if anything exciting happened, and get Owen to go with her if there were weevils), Toshiko followed him to service elevator 2, the one that went to the archives. Though they usually used the stairs, as the elevator wasn't always reliable, occasionally stopping for hours between sub-levels four and five, they did use it to transport large items up and down. However, the elevator also went to the basement below the archives, and Toshiko knew immediately where they were going.

"Jack--"

"We need to dismantle and destroy the remains of the cyber-conversion unit," Jack said. That was when she noticed the brown leather work bag (Suzie's, she recognized) in his hand. "I would do it myself, but I don't know what kind of sensitive materials are in it. It could have a self-destruct mode when you pull a certain wire and blow up the entire Hub."

"I won't know if it has that either," Toshiko said.

"You'll have a better idea than me."

She wasn't quite sure if that was true. When it came to alien materials, Jack knew a lot about them from his experiences (what were they? Toshiko suspected Jack wasn't from this time, and despite his way of dressing, she didn't think it was the past). She could figure out the technologies with relative ease, but she didn't just _know_ the way he did.

Jack smiled (another strange, small smile), but he didn't say anything. He obviously didn't believe what she said to be true. He had more faith in her than she did in herself (and hadn't that always been the way?).

When the elevator, thankfully without incident, made it to the basement, and the doors opened, Toshiko froze.

"I don't know if I can go in there," she said. If the smell of blood was still so strong in the Hub, where there hadn't been as much, and in a larger space with proper ventilation, she couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like in that tiny room.

"It's been cleaned up," Jack said, and Toshiko imagined him scrubbing the floor with a hard-bristled broom, his shirtsleeves rolled up as he went over the bloodstains again and again. The image was comforting, even if that wasn't exactly what she needed. She needed to know that the candles and incense could work their magic in there, in a way they couldn't in the Hub.

"It's okay, Toshiko," he said, but she didn't quite understand his meaning. Was it okay if she didn't go in there, or was the room okay? She knew Jack would never make her do something she felt she couldn't do, but instead of taking advantage of that, it always made her want to be able to do it.

Toshiko took a brave step forward and Jack smiled at her and nodded. He took her hand in his and she felt like Hansel and Gretel, walking through the woods, except they knew they were going to come across the witch in the gingerbread house.

As she feared, she could smell it before they even reached the door and she felt herself suppress a gag, but with her hand in Jack's she felt reassured. He wasn't going to leave her there. He wasn't going to give her more than she could handle. She trusted him enough to know that.

The door at the end of the hall was closed and a shiny silver padlocked stood out against the wooden door. She wondered, briefly, why it was locked. There wasn't anything in there to keep from getting out, not anymore. She realized only a moment later that it wasn't to keep something from coming out, but to keep anyone from going in. Who would want to go in there?

Ianto.

Good god, did Jack have him locked up somewhere in the Hub? She didn't know Jack's darkest self, and it seemed like a scary possibility. Did Torchwood have cells like UNIT? It would be worse, though, underground, cold, and windowless. She could see Ianto in her mind's eye, curled in a corner wearing unattractive orange overalls, disconcerted in the darkness.

She released Jack's hand, his touch no longer so comforting.

It felt far-fetched, but Toshiko knew it wasn't. She knew how possible it was.

"Just a precaution," Jack said, when he spotted her eyeing the lock. He had no idea her mind had already jumped to its own conclusions.

He reached into his left trouser pocket and retrieved a very full, heavy looking key-ring (no wonder he always wore both a belt and braces). What were all those keys for? Why did he need them all? Jack had every electronic lock in the Hub -- which was most of the locks -- programmed into his wrist strap. How many mysterious padlocks were there scattered around the Hub as "precautions"?

Jack finally unlocked the door. He pushed it open and the smell came out of the room in a gust, metallic and mouldy, like licking a copper penny that had gone off.

Toshiko closed her eyes for a moment, but refused to take a deep, calming breath, even when the urge to do so was overwhelming. She nodded, even if Jack wasn't looking at her (he was). "All right," she mumbled. She could adjust. She was capable of that.

Together, they walked into the room, and Toshiko looked around, looking for changes, or evidence that Jack had cleaned like he said he had. The bloodstains scrubbed to brown and all of the photographs and knick-knacks were packed away in boxes stacked atop the short chest of drawers behind the door.

"Where do we begin?" Toshiko asked, moving tentatively toward the unit.

"I pulled off the main panel," Jack said, moving around her in longer strides and getting there first. He wheeled one of the machines, disconnected from the conversation bed, closer to her, turning it around to show her the exposed wires. "That was when I realized I was in over my head. I've never seen a wiring system like this before."

"Neither have I," Toshiko replied, not registering the obviousness of her comment. She stepped closer to it, her dread washing away as her interest took over. She knew what the Cybermen did, and she had seen firsthand what just one could do, yet her fascination won out over her fear. Maybe that's why Jack sent Owen and Suzie to what was left of Torchwood One to go through the wreckage; Toshiko would have wanted to drag every piece of technology home, even if it was harmless or useless. She wanted to learn about everything. It was her blessing and her curse.

"I think everything you'll need is here," Jack said, setting the bag onto the unit bed. "Don't rush this. Take all the time you need and do it right. Don't try to make up for any lost time. Potential to self-destruct, remember? Better to spend a month on this than blow up. Anything is possible." His voice grew softer as he added, "I'll stay here with you as long as you need me to."

"I'll probably need the help," Toshiko replied faintly, already distracted by the otherworldly mechanics in front of her. Figuring it out was always the best part.

For hours, Toshiko poured herself into her work. She opened the other panels, leaving the machines naked, with all their wires exposed. She pulled out her PDA to reference the wires against other systems (Jack didn't ask her why she had alien mechanical blueprints on her personal device), but she had been right in the first place; she hadn't seen anything like it before.

When she looked up, broken from the spell and mystery of the cyber technology for the moment, she looked around for Jack. He was sitting atop the white drawers, peering into the top box of Ianto's (Lisa's?) things.

"Jack?" she said softly, as not to startle him, but it didn't work. There was a slight twitch in his shoulders as he looked up at her.

"Did you find something?" he asked, hopping off the chest and walking to her in one fluid motion.

"I think I'm just scratching the surface, looking at it. I may need to bring my laptop down here and patch it into the system--"

"No." Jack didn't shake his head or cross his arms. He stood still like a statue, complete with stony eyes.

"But if I have my own equipment, maybe I could decipher it faster. I can't tell you anything about this system on the wiring alone, Jack. It's not like anything we've seen or worked with, and the technology is beyond me." Trying not to sound like a petulant employee, she reworded her approach. "Believe me, Jack, if anything from this system tries to work its way onto my computer, we'll know right away. No one besides me could get past the amount of protection I have on it."

Jack considered it for a moment, and finally he nodded. "All right. We should get some lunch, too, while we're up there. How do you feel about Indian?"

\--- --- ---

Toshiko had a breakthrough on the third day of the special project (there really wasn't any sense in code; Gwen and Owen knew what she and Jack were doing in the basement at this point as they had openly discussed it over lunch, but she continued to call it that in her own mind, not wanting to name it for what it really was, out of respect for Ianto, who wasn't even there). The pieces slid into place, like she knew they would eventually, and suddenly the basics made sense. When she understood the basics, the complexities of the technology fell away and became painfully obvious.

"I think it's pretty clear there are no triggers for a self-destruct mode," Toshiko said, showing her findings to Jack, who nodded as he looked over it, but she could see his eyes glazing over on occasion. "In fact, it seems quite harmless."

"Harmless?" Jack repeated, a sharp tone in his voice, but it wasn't unkind.

"Other than the obvious, of course," Toshiko clarified. "The modifications to adapt it into a life-support system removed most of the dangerous materials, or rendered them moot until Lis--it-- um, until it was revamped to do some bastardized version of its original function. That's why the unit killed people instead of upgrading them. It didn't have all the parts to do it. It was easier to transplant the brain into another body, because, well, all the pieces were there."

Sometimes Toshiko felt strange for stumbling over how to refer to Lisa, but she had no problem explaining how the cyber-conversion unit killed people and transplanted brains, but it was her way. That's what was so troubling.

Jack, however, took it in stride, as he did everything. Nothing shocked him, it seemed. "Makes sense. So we can start tearing this thing apart and getting it the hell out of here?"

"We can," Toshiko replied. She hesitated before adding, "I did notice that the advanced cooling system on the unit is actually compatible with our computers--"

"I don't think so," Jack said. "We're destroying it all. I don't want to see any remnants of this anywhere. When we're finished, you're going to delete all the information you've obtained off your computer. I don't want any of this floating around in the system."

"But it could be _useful_!"

"Doesn't matter. This is cyber-technology that we don't need. Torchwood One fell because they fucked around with this stuff--"

"Technically, this wasn't what they were fucking around with," Toshiko interrupted, surprising herself a bit.

Jack smiled briefly, looking almost pleased she was arguing with him (maybe because he was going to knock her on her ass when he made his point). "This is the result of what they were doing. If they hadn't messed with the temporal disturbance, they wouldn't have died." He pointed to the unit bed. "Lisa? She wouldn't have died. She and Ianto would making babies in London right now. The delivery girl and the doctor would still be alive, not to mention the eight hundred Torchwood employees and countless civilians who died that day."

There was a slight catch in his voice and Toshiko wondered how many people he knew that died. Was it that there were so many? Was it one person in particular? Of all the things she could ask him, that was not one of them.

"I don't want to have anything to with this stuff," Jack continued. "I can't look at this and see anything but their deaths."

Toshiko sighed. "But isn't this what we do? Use alien technology to our advantage? For good? It's just a cooling system."

"Not this technology," Jack said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "It's not worth it. We have enough reminders of what happened in London. We don't need them in our equipment, however supposedly harmless. This is death, and it's nothing else."

"Jack, where's Ianto?" Toshiko asked, the subject change feeling abrupt to her, but she couldn't wonder any longer.

Jack looked surprised. "Do you think I killed him?" He was so casual, almost amused, like killing his employees was all in a regular day's work. He crossed his arms over his chest and raised a curious eyebrow to Toshiko.

"I... I don't know," she said, suddenly not so confident. "Maybe you had him... in a holding cell somewhere in the Hub."

"Oh, Toshiko, no," Jack said, knowing exactly where she was coming from (and how she got here). He stepped closer to her and cupped her face in his hands, tilting her face toward his so she was looking him in the eye. His hands felt warm, like when the one was clasped in hers three days earlier. His Hansel hands. He released her before he began to speak, but she continued to look up at him.

"I don't do that," he said, "Ianto is safely at home. I put him on unpaid suspension until everyone's ready for him to come back. He's grieving, and he can't do that here. And it's too soon for everyone else to have him around. Feelings are still too strong."

Toshiko felt her face flushing. How could she think such things about Jack? But how could she not? He was an enigma, and so were his methods. She had no idea how cruel he was capable of being, and she suspected (many times, after a few key instances, Ianto not being the first) she had only seen the beginning of it.

But then again, she had no idea the extent of Jack's kindness, either.

"Why didn't you tell anyone where he was?" she asked.

Jack frowned, and his eyes changed (was that sadness?). "No one asked."

Oh.

"Have you been seeing him?"

"Not yet," Jack replied. "But I have been keeping in contact with him over the phone, checking in a few times a day. He'll be okay."

Toshiko tried to think over the last few days, if she had seen Jack on the phone, as he had been with her almost the entire time, but she couldn't remember it happening. Of course, she had been completely absorbed in her work. He could have left the room and come back without her noticing. She didn't multi-task nearly as well as Jack.

"Why didn't you... you know..."

"Kill him?" Jack asked. "Did you want me to?"

"No! Of course not. But... I thought you were going to. I... I wouldn't have put it past you," Toshiko said honestly.

He smiled and nodded. "Very wise, Toshiko, because I would have killed him. If Ianto needed to die to protect the rest of the team, to protect the _world_ , he would be dead right now. But Ianto isn't a cyber-mastermind. He wasn't trying to take over the world. He was trying to save his girlfriend and was so blinded he didn't realize she wasn't there anymore. He was stupid, and he made a lot of mistakes, but that isn't punishable by death. Not today. Not when he has the rest of his life to live knowing that two people are dead because of his actions, and he will never forget that." Jack paused, studying her face for a moment. "Do you want to know a secret?"

Toshiko nodded. "Yes."

"That's not the real reason Ianto is still alive. Part of it, but not all of it."

"What's that, then?"

Jack smiled (that was most definitely sadness). "Because I can't honestly say that if I had been in Ianto's place I wouldn't have done the exact same thing."

Toshiko paused to absorb that information. She thought about that night a week ago, and Jack's face in the red security lights as Ianto tearfully asked him if he had ever loved anyone, and how Jack didn't respond.

Now she knew the answer.

"Should we tear this mother down?" Jack asked, slapping a hand against one of the stripped down machines, and the sound echoed in the tiny room. It sounded like a slap across a metal face.

Toshiko could still smell the blood, and it would never go away. She knew that now. Torchwood always had blood on its hands. But maybe they could adjust to the inevitable. No matter how close it came to them, it would always come closer. They could ignore it, and cover it up with candles and incense, but the smell of blood would always be there. If it wasn't this time, it would be next time.

There was always a next time.

She nodded again. "Let's get it out of here."


End file.
